Shader/ParticleFX pipelines...?

Jeremy Lindstrom

I've really wanted to move into creating shaders and particle fx for our game, but not really sure where to start..

Our current pipeline doesn't allow much for the artist in regards to create shaders and particle fx (explosions, smoke, etc) and the coders have to take time from their code and bug fixing to try and understand what we mean when we want the blood to be more fluid and less of a puff... and the smoke there, should get larger and not rotate as much, and would be awesome if you can throw up some dirt with that explosion... can we animate the fire....etc etc...

I'm sure you can see why I'd like to find a way to port some of the technical art stuff over to the artists.. in as simple way as I can and still get the HLSL stuff integrated into our art pipeline and integrate it so the art department can create particle fx, explosions, smoke fx, etc and port the HLSL or CGSL code back to our coders for inclusion into the game..

We've recently upgraded to Max 2010 which supposedly has Mental Mill artist edition but not sure if that's where I should start..from looking at the info doesn't seem like it's the place i need to start..

I'm seriously starting at ground zero here in learning to create shaders, etc and was wondering if some of you experienced folks had any ideas for our shop. Either way I'd like to learn more as I've had about 10 year IT background so I'm not too afraid of raw code..

Any ideas where I should start?

Microneezia

Im not an expert, but ive got the following links saved in this general hlsl area:

http://www.tech-artists.org/ - I think this place is a good resource.

you use Max, so below is a realtime shader system that fits right into max, also its free for independant use, but your company I think will have to purchase a license. Ive used it quite a bit and some times shaders can be brought right into engine. Its a good way to learn because you dont have to transfer everything into engine first, also there are tons of downloadable instructional videos on the site

http://www.lumonix.net/shaderfx.html

I think Ben clowards site is a must visit - he co-authored ShaderFX and is a general shader guru - lots of tutorials ect here on building shaders.

http://www.bencloward.com/resources.shtml

Mark Dygert

Mental Mill artist edition is pretty limited I don't think it will allow you to export the shaders you make, which means you can create them, view them but not use them... Which means its more of a trial version and you need to buy the standard version if you're going to use it for anything.

I haven't tried out Mental Mill and I'm not exactly sure what all it can do but ShaderFX is a little cheaper and seems to do the same things even a little more.

Unfortunately the particles and animated textures is largely a code monkey thing. I'm not sure there's much you can do as an artist other then work with the sandbox you're given. Pretty much you can learn about the different types of particle generators, what you can feed them and what kinds of events they can handle, and make suggestions on what you think would work in real time in your engine and hope for the best.

I really like particle flow inside of 3dsmax, there is a lot you can do with it and so far Unreal3 "Cascade" looks like it comes close but there is a lot of room for improvement based on what I've seen of the editor.

Personally I'd make sure a great animation blending system is put in place before adding shaders and advaned particle effects. Bad animation looks really bad even when next to fancy exlposions and amazing life like materials. Not saying you guys have bad anims or anything, just saying my priorities are a little different.

Eric Chadwick

The links from Microneezia are a great place to start. I wouldn't say it's always a code monkey thing, Vig. Shader authoring isn't really all that tough, just another language to learn, and pretty quick to pick up at that. Lots of samples around to learn from. The difficulty lies in making shaders that support different hardware than your standard PC, but writing shaders for regular PC hardware is pretty universal.

If you guys don't have a particle system editor integrated into your engine pipeline, then it's going to be tough for an effects artist to do their work. That has to be top priority IMO if your team wants better particles and effects.

Here's a low-cost particle editor that you might be able to integrate with your game engine code.
http://www.binarysun.co.uk/free-games/exgen/

Some details about particle systems by Valve (performance is the key baby!)
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Particle_System_Overview

UDN has some good info too, should give you an idea of what features might be helpful in a particle editor.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/ParticleSystems.html